Reduce Stress of a New Workplace
Changing your job is stressful. Especially if you are used to being highly efficient in your old workplace and you have high standards for yourself. It happens even if it is your own decision, and you have made the change “for the better.” In this COVID19 period, when everything that could go offline went offline, and human contact was reduced to bare minimum, it may be even more challenging. I experienced this transient period of job change a few times by now (one is recent) and got to some conclusions based on my own experience, self-observance and discussions with friends and colleagues.
What is causing your stress?
This is an important question you need to ask yourself. Stress is dissonance in the state you observe and the state you believe it should be. That is the gap between what the actual situation is and what you expect it to be. To make it more concrete – it is caused by your expectations – you are used to do a lot of work, you are used to do complex work, you are used to work independently, to contribute significantly and to discuss equally with other team members.
Now you can’t do it the same way.
And you are freaking out.
“What is wrong with me?”
“I was hired because of my expertise, and I am not able to fully practice it – oh, God, what if they fire me?!”
“I am not able to do anything on my own, without asking someone even the smallest thing.”
It takes time to adapt
What you forget in all these sentences is the word JET, and the answer is TIME. Nothing is wrong with you. You just have changed your environment and you are adapting to it. It takes time. You are faced with a lot of new things, even if your new job position is the same as the old one. What you need to process in the beginning can be divided in three areas:
- Getting to know your scope of work
- Learning and adapting to company culture and procedures
- Building relationships and trust with your co-workers
The formal onboarding process helps, but it cannot replace live experience.
Getting to know your scope of work
For example, a job of a software developer is to develop features for an application. Behind this general description it is hidden what you actually need to learn: What the application does and how (business logic), how the code base is built (coding standard and architecture), what tools are in use and how, what is the process of work – what steps you need to follow to produce valuable piece of code. No one is expert in all the tools available in the IT industry. Even if you are familiar with some of them, you rarely know how to use everything – so you need to learn.
This can be applied to any other industry: learn about a product or a service (core business), tools and a process of work. The more experience you have, the easier you will pick up necessary things. I will emphasize that what was an automated action for you in the old workplace, now you need to google or ask someone. That demands more of your energy and lowers your work pace. Now when everything is on-line, the one you ask may not reply instantly which is causing further delays and slowing down the process.
Learning and adapting to company culture and procedures
Of course, you almost never work alone. To collaborate efficiently with others, you need to know how – who is the person responsible for what, how you communicate with them, can you just chat or email them or open a formal ticket, or go to their office and ask (in online version this is not an option). Again, something that you knew perfectly well on your previous job, now you need to relearn – by working and along the way.
Building relationships and trust with your co-workers
You need to get to know people you work with and they need to know you. There is no shortcut here. There is no training that can help you with this. You cannot force it nor speed it up. It is faster when you collaborate tightly with someone, and when the company has an open culture, but still, it demands enough time and shared work. By building relationships and trust, you feel free to express yourself genuinely, to approach directly and to understand fully. Then, the flow starts.
Timeframe
How much time does it take for all these processes? In my experience, and based on discussions with friends and coworkers, the first three months you can forget about any impression you had in your new work (good or bad) – it is most probably irrelevant. After that, next three months, you are catching up the speed and starting to be yourself again – your productivity and efficiency is growing and the amount of stress is falling. After a year, you finally feel that you are on your terrain. These are some general milestones, and of course, dependent on the actual job and people.
What else can you do to help yourself to adapt?
Don’t doubt yourself
Yes, it is hard in the beginning. You are not performing as you are used to. Even if you are well aware of everything I have written so far you are still afraid and doubting your skill and knowledge. Simply don’t do that. “I should have known this by now” is the sentence of the devil’s advocate to ruin your self esteem. No, you couldn’t, and you are learning it now. If you are someone who acted sincerely and genuinely on the job interview, you didn’t cheat on your entrance test, then trust your employer has got a good impression of you and your skills. Also if your employer is realistic, it will expect that you do need time to get to your full productivity. So spare yourself – things will fall into their place.
Focus on observing and asking questions
You might be eager to prove your value, knowledge and expertise to your managers and colleagues, but at the same time fighting with the fact that you are not fully productive or worse that you have the impression that you are doing everything wrong. This causes a huge amount of stress.
First few months are reserved for something else. Instead of focusing on your inability to do the same amount of work as before, focus on observing your new environment, people interactions, attitudes, and ask questions. That way you will learn faster and by expressing genuine interest and eagerness to learn you will be perceived as dedicated (by yourself and others). By the time you start being 100% productive you will have your good starting position to demonstrate your skills and contribute fully to your company. In the same time you will spare yourself of the feeling that you are ”pushing the pull door.”
In the end, if the stress doesn’t stop – maybe that was not the best place for you after all…
